Menu

Prompts
DirectoryContestsMagazineFAQ
Stories
Studio
Apps

Hire professionals for your project

Advice, insights and news

Online publishing courses

Free publishing webinars

Launch your book in style

Bestseller PodcastBook Cover ArtSuccess Stories
Tools
Book Promotion SitesBook Review BlogsBooktube Channel GuideBook Title GeneratorCharacter Name GeneratorIndependent PublishersLiterary AgentsLiterary MagazinesPen Name GeneratorPlot GeneratorPublishers DirectoryShort Story IdeasWriting ContestsWriting ExercisesWriting Scholarships
Menu
Prompts
Contests
Stories
Blog
Directory
Contests
Magazine
FAQ

Write a story about a character who struggles to translate their thoughts and feelings into words and action.

Posted in Angst on Dec 16, 2022

Submissions are closed

Make sure you don't miss our next contest by creating your free Reedsy account.

Sign in with Google
Sign in with Facebook

Or use an email address:

Why not check out our active contest?

✍️ 53 stories

Screaming Flowers

Shortlisted for Contest #177 ⭐️

Outdoors, it is a brilliantly sunny day in May, and the sunshine forces its way indoors unbidden.Her apartment window is propped open, and a stiff breeze invades the studio, but no curtains billow: the room is empty now, its only decoration a mural of huge flowers in a riot of colors on a chipped and fading wall. She painted that mural with her own hands, but she thinks perhaps she should have put some of that effort into repainting the wall, as well. Now the too-loud colors of the flowers seem to scream at her from their deteriorating priso...

89 likes 97 comments 97
Read story

The Papercut

Submitted to Contest #177

When I wake up, the doctor gives me the facts. She delivers them to me gently—her voice like a warm cup of water you could steep a bag of tea in. Somehow, she’s made a car accident sound like a papercut, and so I decide that's what I'd like to call it from now on—a papercut. Can you feel your toes? she asks.I think so. It’s hard to tell. Hm. Can you tell me your name? John.Can you see anything, John? No. Is that normal?Typically. She excuses herself to check on another patient, and I anxiously wait for her to co...

46 likes 43 comments 43
Read story

The Bare Necessities of Humanity

Submitted to Contest #177

AugustThe foyer of St. Mary’s orphanage smells likes lye soap and freshly baked bread.“Professor Gray, bless you for coming.”The click of heels echoes through the hallway before I see her face—stoic and smooth, much like her black, unwrinkled dress.“Are you Sister Marie?”“Yes, that’s me.” She smiles and extends her hand.“I came as soon as I received your letter.”“And I cannot tell you how grateful I am that you’ve agreed to take this on, Professor.” She exhales in a huff.“Your letter—I read it three times as I could hardly believe the detail...

34 likes 40 comments 40
Read story

Twenty Years to Ten

Submitted to Contest #177

I like this boy. He seems like he cares. Once a week he comes to my room and talks to me about his life. He plans to be a personal support worker. I think he would make a good one. After I was diagnosed with this disease I had visitors for a while. My wife, kids, relatives, and old friends. My company now includes a runny meal a few times a day, a bitter instant coffee in the mornings, and the occasional seagull perched on my windowsill.The boy’s name is Ethan. He’s a good kid, a volunteer at the long-term care home I live in. I can sen...

32 likes 31 comments 31
Read story

Yesterday

Submitted to Contest #177

It was early morning and late in winter, the sky bruised and cold. Grass sheened with frost. I wanted to step outside and draw a deep breath of the air, feel the sharp cold of it filling me.Behind me, in the kitchen, my husband was on the phone to another woman. I turned to look at him. His hair was damp from the shower, face shaved.“Tonight will be fine,” he said. I could hear the soft lilt of her reply but couldn’t make out what she said.“If you come around eight no one else will be home,” he said. He hung up and turned toward me. His eyes...

22 likes 21 comments 21
Read story

Going Dutch

Submitted to Contest #177

It’s a Willy Wonka world out there. Dis-ease is sweeping the country. Not just the mutating variants of CoVid, but the malaise of racial discontent. Liberals and conservatives stoke the fires of cultural animosity. The left tries to bridge the interests of educated college kids and the urban underclass. This is the case, even though your average inner-city dweller, especially if they have criminal experiences, will rip off a bubbly idealistic undergraduate for their undergarments if given the chance. The right h...

21 likes 14 comments 14
Read story

Patient Number 1632

Submitted to Contest #177

Dear Reader, This story is about love and loss and sanity. It contains misunderstanding, miscommunication, and a few death threats. Read with caution.Amanda***Dear Reader,Ok, Ok, I know I am running behind, but you simply must forgive me. The next book absolutely will be out post haste! I am furiously researching, reading, learning, and maybe thinking about exploring for answers on my own-out in the real world. Hold your applause, please, Dear Reader. I can and will take my time with this next book. I simply believe it’s what this next ...

21 likes 12 comments 12
Read story

The Boy Next Door

Submitted to Contest #177

Teenage boys are like rough, unfinished works of art. They are paint on the canvas, nothing yet blended together with a brush, the final picture imagined but unknown. Clay on the wheel, unspun and uncreated, only glistening with possibility. They are everything their mothers saw in them when they were little boys and everything they’ll one day become, waiting to be born. But when you’re a teenage girl, you don’t know this. Adult Grace would study the past and say, there was more to Alexander Laurent than met her eye. There was more to hi...

19 likes 8 comments 8
Read story

Room for Me

S N

Submitted to Contest #177

The frayed cuff of Lanelle Vidal’s gray cotton hoodie slid behind her, rustling up leaves as she paced in front of the local cinema. Car horns from across the street echoed through the parking lot, like the piercing flaps of a bat’s wings in a cave.          “Are you almost here?” Lanelle asked into her mobile phone.          “Yeah, but please go ahead and buy the ticket.”Lanelle refrained from stating the obvious: Charlie was supposed to have...

15 likes 8 comments 8
Read story

THE MIND IS A LONELY HUNTER

Submitted to Contest #177

*** WARNING: Mild profanity. ***My body totally betrayed me when I was under anesthesia to have my tonsils removed. What I mean by that is, just because my heart stopped beating for like, what, twenty minutes or something, for that small span of time my brain just lacked a little bit of oxygen, nothing really to write home about. What’s the big deal? Then, all of a sudden, I’m like evicted, tossed out, given the bum’s rush. Jeesh. That’s gratitude for you. After all I’d done to keep fit and ready. Healthy e...

14 likes 12 comments 12
Read story

A Thousand Lies a Day

Submitted to Contest #177

(Semi-Autobiographical Fiction)The bell rings, and within moments, students pour out of classroom doors. The hallway fills with the echoing sounds of laughter, shouting and squeaking sneakers. Throngs of students move in every direction, all racing against the nine-minute period break.I walk through this chaos, down the middle of the hallway. I’ve got my headphones on, listening to the latest album by INXS on my Walkman. Trying to tune out the world. I keep my eyes downward and make myself as invisible as possible. By being unremarkable, wit...

14 likes 10 comments 10
Read story

Nana's Vacation

Submitted to Contest #177

I heard Nana speak, but I didn’t understand what she said. It was hard to understand her because I couldn’t see her face. Her bed was up on a frame too high for me to see over. The grownups all stood above the bed and looked down at her. I figured out where her face was because all the grownups were looking there. I heard Nana asking to see me but none of the grownups wanted to pick me up.Nana put her arm out over the bed, but the frame was too high and my arms were too short to reach her. I even tried standing on my tippy toes. Nana was wea...

12 likes 2 comments 2
Read story

A DESIRE TO DIE

Submitted to Contest #177

I remember the first time I wanted to die. I was nine years old and we were visiting my grandparents. After dinner, my grandfather said he didn’t feel well and had to lie down in bed. They called for an ambulance. I sat on the window sill of his room and watched him while he lay there moaning. And I thought, “I guess this is what it looks like as death approaches.” And it seemed very pleasant and exciting. Later on, when I started medical school, I found that I was fascinated by the cadavers in the anatomy lab. They all seemed so peace...

12 likes 9 comments 9
Read story

Camarones With The Crocodile: Tinkering Part 2

Submitted to Contest #177

Disclaimer: Strong language, violence, and the aftermath of sexual abuse. 2015 San Ignacio, Sinaloa, Mexico The Crocodile was rapidly becoming the stuff of legend. A regionally popular band was making the charts with a driving narcocorrido about "Los Dientes Del Cocodrilo," and his bloody exploits on behalf of the Cartel de Sinaloa. The rising star of Mexico's Golden Triangle thus had bristled about meeting in this filthy side-street marisqueria in the tiny backwater of San Ignacio. He preferred the gran entrada -- the splashy entrance, t...

10 likes 22 comments 22
Read story

Actions and Results

Submitted to Contest #177

Lying in bed alone in his childhood room, the young man sulked over what he felt was his disappointing life. He was twenty-five years old, and he felt dull. He did not have any friends or a significant other. He simply worked online from home and saved money. In his free time, the young man watched television and surfed the internet. His lack of experience outside the house made him afraid to meet new people. He knew that, at some point in the small talk, people would ask, “What do you do for fun in your free time?” and he would be emba...

10 likes 5 comments 5
Read story

🌟 Similar prompts

Write a story about two or more characters who don't speak each other's language (literally or metaphorically), but still find a way to communicate.

Dialogue – 54 stories

Set your story in a meeting where a professional interpreter takes some liberties, with major consequences.

Funny – 12 stories

Write about someone who is slowly forgetting their mother tongue or losing their language.

Character – 22 stories

Lost in a foreign city where they don’t speak the language, your character uses a translation app to get around, but constantly runs into problems.

Adventure – 9 stories

How to Write a Novel

Join Tom Bromley for a writing master class and finish your first draft in 3 months. Learn more →

How to Write a Novel